


Umbarto

by glitterlessgold490



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: (depending on what you call canon), Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Redemption, hurt and more hurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 09:56:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10435164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitterlessgold490/pseuds/glitterlessgold490
Summary: He and his twin are supposed to be exactly alike.  He was supposed to be able to trust his brothers.  They were supposed to be the heroes, not villains.What can he do when he realizes they were wrong?





	

The elf who could not sleep under the stars did not even have a name. Rather, he had too many, but none that were agreed upon, none that he used to refer to just himself. Perhaps that was because he was only half of a person, one half of Ambarussa, the name his mother had given to both him and his twin, after their red hair.  
His twin lay beside him on the ground, breathing softly and evenly, his sleeping face with the fine bones and splattering of freckles a perfect mirror of what his own face should look like now. In looks and speech and thought they were identical - everyone said so. They could be told apart by the shade of their red hair - one was darker than the other, but why would anyone bother when they acted so much alike? They were the Ambarussa and they were never apart and could never disagree, because they had one heart and one mind.  
That is what they told each other, at any rate. That was what his twin had said when Father asked them to swear the oath, “Of course we will do it, and we will go into exile together. We can never be parted.” He had agreed because sometimes he was afraid that he was less than half of Ambarussa, that his twin was bolder and quicker, and that must not be, not when they had the same heart. But if they were truly one, why was it that half of them could sleep so peacefully while one lay awake in the permanent darkness, pondering names to distract himself from guilt and grief?  
They were not always called by the same name. His father had never liked the idea and told his mother to change one, but his mother was fierce and bold and stubborn. She had said that one would be called “Umbarto,” which meant “fated” but would not say which one. Father called it a curse and the name was never used, which was probably for the best, because they were all fated now, cursed by the Oath. Umbarto could be any of his brothers. Instead, father had named him, the youngest, Ambarto, which meant “upwards-exalted” but Father was the only one that used it, because he could never be as upwards-exalted as his father believed.  
He stared up at the sky and the canopy of stars arching above him. Elves were supposed to love the stars, but compared to the light of the Two Trees he thought they were distant and cold and lonely. He did not want to be in this strange dark land, with the colors dim and the air chill, but what could he do? Even back home the trees were gone forever, and all of Tirion was dark, and his mother was sitting alone. He squeezed his eyes shut and told himself to think about something different, something easier, like names again.  
His eldest brothers, Maitimo and Makalaurë were the only ones allowed to call the Ambarussa by their father names, “Pityafinwë” and “Telufinwë” because they meant “little Finwë” and “last Finwë”. The others would use them to make fun, but Makalaurë was too gentle to tease, and Maitimo was such a good diplomat that he always made you feel like someone worth speaking to.  
The twins adored their brothers, even if they teased them. They had toddled after them since they could walk, begging Tyelkormo to take them hunting, or Curufinwë to teach them how to cut a jewel, or just trying to make Carnistir actually laugh and get Makalaurë to sing them a song. There was nothing worse than being left behind, waiting while they rode out on adventures and feeling forgotten, unloved. That hurt more than the arguing, because Maitimo could always resolve a fight. He was the eldest and they trusted him completely, even more than Father.  
“Maitimo is going,” his twin had said. “He says it’s our duty. Maitimo knows it’s the right thing. All our brothers are going, and we can’t be left behind, Ambarussa, not again!”  
“Don’t you leave me!” His mother had begged, her red hair flying as she shook her head. “Not all of you, not all of my sons.”  
“Why don’t you come?” Curufinwë had asked.  
“Because it’s a waste of lives, and your father is leading you into ruin.”  
“Father would never do that,” said Maitimo, “and neither would I. No lives will be wasted or lost.”  
Trust in Maitimo, Ambarussa had said. But Maitimo had been wrong, and on the ships across the dark ocean, the Ambarussa had had their first fight ever.  
“I do not want food,” he had said to his twin, when Ambarussa had come to his bunk with bread and dried meat.  
“But you are hungry, Ambarussa,” his twin had replied, frowning. “You haven’t eaten in two days. You must try.” He stood taller, it seemed, with new muscles from training every day with his other brothers. His face seemed thinner, with stronger edges. More like their father’s. At his side hung a jeweled, shining sword.  
The lesser twin pulled the scratchy blanket over his head and curled up tighter in his bunk to block out the sight. “Everything I eat comes back up.”  
“That is just the ship rocking. You’ll get used to it, I already have.”  
“The ship hates us, Ambarussa. At least it should after what we - what we -”  
“That’s silly,” said his twin. “It’s just dead wood.”  
The tears had started to come, and his voice was a shameful childish whine. “I can’t eat and I can’t sleep and I want to go home. Please, Ambarussa, let’s go home. Just you and me. Let’s go back home.”  
“We can’t go home, brother, this is our chance! You heard Father, we will do deeds that will be remembered forever.”  
“I don’t care about that. What if our deeds are evil, like - like -”  
“Our deeds can’t be evil because we’re fighting the evil. We have to defeat Melkor and take back what is ours. We have to avenge Grandfather. You know this, Ambarussa. Our place is here, with our family.”  
“I don’t know if our vengeance is worth this, Ambarussa.”  
“Of course it is! How can you say that?”  
He flung back the blanket. “Because I killed people!” He could see their faces, hear their screams. He hadn’t meant to do it, hadn’t wanted to do it, but he’d seen his brothers drawing their swords and he had drawn his, and the Teleri had bows and arrows and he had been so afraid…  
His twin stormed forward. “We all killed people. We had to do it, Ambarussa, for the quest and the greater good! You need to stop thinking too much and grow up!”  
At the sound of shouting Maitimo hurried in, ever the peacemaker, but he just stopped and stared, unable to comprehend the sight of the twins arguing with each other. Perhaps he had never realized that the twins could argue, that they could have separate points of view, but he could not be faulted for that. The Ambarussa had never realized it either. Maitimo should have stayed outside, however, because the weeping twin found it much easier to attack his older brother than his other self.  
“You lied to me!” he screamed, launching himself at Maitimo, but he was little and weak and Maitimo easily caught his wrists and held him off. “You said no lives would be wasted and no lives lost but I killed them! I killed the Teleri and their lives are lost and wasted and you lied.”  
It was as though someone had drawn curtains over a window. Maitimo’s face became closed off, distant, strange. It was not the face of his brother. He tried to struggle away, but Maitimo held him firmly at arm’s length.  
“He wants to go home,” his twin said. “Tell him he can’t.”  
“You cannot go home,” said Maitimo gravely. “None of us can. We swore the Oath. Can you feel it?”  
The worst part was, he could. It was as if someone had tied a string to his entrails and was tugging it slightly, gently, but insistently eastwards. It turned his stomach almost as much as the memory of Teleri blood. And if he closed his eyes and sat in silence, he could almost hear the words whispering “Be he friend or foe, be he foul or clean…”  
“We bound ourselves to everlasting darkness if we failed. We swore it. If you break the Oath you will be destroyed, do you understand me?” Maitimo’s eyes were blazing.  
He stood there, shaking, in Maitimo’s grasp. “Maybe,” he licked his lips. “Maybe we deserve -”  
“No!” His twin rushed at him and flung his arms around him in a vice-like embrace. “Don’t you say that, Ambarussa. Don’t you ever say that! We are going to live and grow strong and go on adventures like we always wanted. We have to live.”  
“Like it or not, our path is forward,” said Maitimo, and left.  
“Besides,” his twin said, “Where would we go in Valinor? They cast us out. We are not wanted.”  
And so he had tried, he really had. Even though he vomited up half of what he ate and could not sleep at night for fear of nightmares, he began to train with his brothers, brandishing a heavy sword that hung at his hip and banged his thigh. He took to consciously mirroring his twin, imitating his movements, his laughter, his words, trying to be as confident as Ambarussa, as strong as Ambarussa, as whole as Ambarussa, not a nameless half-thing. If I can just make it to the end of this voyage, he told himself, maybe it won’t be so bad.  
But now they were at the end of the voyage, and Middle Earth was barren and cold and dark. That was not unbearable, but soon they would have to fight again, to use that heavy sword that now lay by his side as he tried to sleep. His life would become a series of Alqualondës. He could see it - he could see them, the dying ones. He could hear their screams, he could feel the hot sticky blood splattering his face and hands. He was there - he was butchering Teleri. The Oath would make him do it. Foe or friend, foul or clean, he would have to kill them all, guilty and innocent alike.  
His breath was coming in short, sharp gasps and he shoved his hand into his mouth, biting down to keep from screaming. Tears warm as blood were rolling down his face and he curled himself into a tight little ball, shaking and shaking. He wanted to howl. He wanted his mother. What had she done, when she learned her sons were murderers?  
Then he heard his brother’s voices. He forced himself to go limp and quiet, to breathe as slowly and deeply as Ambarussa, to look as peaceful.  
“Still up, Maitimo?” It was Tyelkormo speaking. Their footsteps were drawing nearer.  
“Yes. Do you know if Father is awake? I want to speak with him about the ships. We need to send them back as soon as possible, tomorrow hopefully, and he hasn’t made the proper organizational decisions-”  
“What, worried Findekáno’s getting impatient?” There was Tyelkormo’s booming laugh.  
“I’d be more worried about Irrisë.” The footsteps were passing away, the voices fading.  
He lay, frozen, in the dirt. They were sending the ships back tomorrow, for Nolofinwë’s kin. If he could sneak aboard there was a way out for him. There was a way home.  
That was ridiculous to think about. His place was here, his duty was here, to his twin, to his family -  
Mother is my family.  
He could see her now, chipping away at a block of marble. “Freeing the figure from the stone,” she used to call it. He used to sit and watch her, entirely intent on her work. Sometimes she’d take spare chips of rock and carve them into little animals for him to play with on the studio floor until his twin suggested they go adventuring outside. He almost asked her to teach them, but Ambarussa thought it would be boring and that it was more fun to play with their brothers.  
I spent so long trying to be like my brothers, maybe I should have tried to be like you.  
Father called her a coward for not coming with them, but she had not seemed scared to him, more determined, unyielding like the stone she carved. And she had been right, where they all had been wrong, even Maitimo. And they had left her, left her behind like his brothers used to leave out the twins when they were small. They had abandoned her.  
He wondered if she would ever forgive them for what they had done. Then, slowly, a memory came to him. He was tiny, and knocked over a vase that his mother had sculpted into something beautiful. She had shouted at him and he had been so ashamed that he had ran and hid in the roots of a great tree. His mother had sent his twin to find him, and his twin could always find him because they had one heart and one mind. When brought before her again he confessed he had been hiding because he was sad she did not love him anymore. “No, sweet one,” she said, picking him up. “I was angry, but I am your mother and I will always love you, no matter what.”  
He was crying again. It seemed he did that all the time now.  
He could go back. He could go back and beg pardon to the Valar, to the Teleri, to all that he had injured. The idea terrified him, and he knew that he would be hated, but wasn’t it better to be hated for trying to do good than loved for evil acts? Perhaps one day they could forgive him. Perhaps he could heal some of the hurt his family had left behind. He could never be truly clean again, but at least if he left he wouldn’t make things worse.  
He rolled over to look at his sleeping twin, studying him in the starlight. Strong, brave, untroubled, everything Ambarussa should be. “I love you,” he whispered, “but we are not one heart and one mind, and my duty is behind, not ahead. I’m sorry.” He kissed his twin’s forehead.  
His twin mumbled something and opened his eyes.  
“I can’t sleep out here,” he said. “I’m going back to the ship. I’ll see you soon.”  
He had never before lied to his twin.  
His twin closed his eyes again, murmuring, “alright. Goodnight, Ambarussa.”  
He turned away and breathed the words, “that is not my name.”  
That was true, he thought, as he walked down to the ships. He was not Ambarussa, as he had always thought, and he was not Ambarto, because not even father would call him upwards-exalted after this betrayal, and refusing to avenge his grandfather certainly rendered him unworthy to be called a Finwë of any kind. Who was he then?  
The sword was in his hand as he approached the ships. Suddenly, he felt a violent tug in his gut, pulling him backwards. The Oath. The words where whirring in his head: Our word hear thou, Eru Allfather! To the everlasting Darkness doom us if our deed faileth.  
He took a deep breath, calming his nausea, straining against the pull. He raised his head and looked at those cold, pale stars. “Here me, Eru,” he said. “I say no more.” He hurled his sword into the sea. “Never again will I butcher the innocent. Never again will I bear a weapon. I renounce this evil oath and repent my deeds. If I am to be doomed for that, then let me be doomed.” His eyes widened. “That is who I am,” he breathed. “I am the fated one. I am Umbarto.”  
And Umbarto closed his eyes, reaching inside himself, feeling the thread of The Oath, and snapped it.  
He shivered in the sea breeze, feeling the hollowness inside. He waited for thunder, or an earthquake, or some sign of divine wrath, but there was nothing, so he turned and walked aboard a ship, climbing down to hide amongst the supplies. For the first time in months he slept, truly slept, untroubled by dreams. Umbarto slept so soundly that he did not smell the smoke or hear the flames until it was too late.

**Author's Note:**

> I am so sorry, everybody! But do not lose hope. Umbarto will appear again in my final story for Fëanorian Week, (Nerdanel & Feanor day) so look for it then if you need something a little more cathartic after this trauma.


End file.
